UBL LCSC Minutes

Tuesday - 5 November 2002

Attendees: Jon Bosak, Sally Chan, Mark Guenthart, Tim McGrath, Bill Meadows, Sue Probert, Marion Royal, Lisa Seaburg, Gunther Stuhec, Peter Yim, Monica J. Martin

1. Welcome from Chair and appointment of Secretary to take minutes - Monica to take minutes.

2. Acceptance of previous minutes (from Oct 29th and Oct 22nd) - Accepted.

• Summary of meeting on 31st Oct (http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/admindocs/minutes31oct02.html)

3. Revised Work Plan

• * Proposed schedule (see below)
  • Dec 2002 Release LC 0p70, form Implementation SC,
  • begin final public review of NDR
  • Jan 2003 Release supporting materials, answer questions
  • from implementers, ramp up work on
  • Context Methodology
  • Feb 2003 Meet with X12, get input from X12 members
  • Mar 2003 Process input received during review cycle
  • May 2003 Roll out 1p00 at XML Europe 2003 (London)
  • and release to OASIS standards process
  • Jun 2003 OASIS review
  • Jul 2003 OASIS vote
  • Sep 2003 Transfer schemas to ?????

Notes from discussion:

• Release: End of December 2002. Timeline in agenda provided to team.
• Reference implementations and specification vote: Three required for the specification. Vote for OASIS is scheduled for July 2003.
• Quality Assurance update: Updates made to Project Scope document with logical reorganization. Await Mike Adcock's feedback to changes. Hold teleconference to another time other than Friday morning. Discussed whether another call would be scheduled – Thursday or Friday. QA call will be 10 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. EST on Friday, 8 November 2002.
• Release comments: Concerns raised by spreadsheet by Mike Adcock, which may require delay of QA review. Peer review and QA is set for 2 weeks. Need QA model prior to the Nov. 18 Face-to-Face meeting. Discussed editing and process. The Thursday session will be used to discuss/resolve key issues.

4. Release 0p70

• V.0.70 Release Work Schedule and Discussion: - Normalized components:
  • [Change 110502:SP] Example, Transport Equipment has only one owner and more than one piece of equipment. Need to define who provides the transport equipment i.e. their role [Probert].[End Change]
  • Pink lines in the normalized spreadsheet are aggregates while green lines show objects that can be navigated.
  • Probert questioned the inconsistencies of application/use of specialization and generalization in the model.
  • How does our definition for Association relate to the Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS)? McGrath indicated they are the same.
  • McGrath said the normalized component spreadsheet/model achieves what we hoped to do. Questions were raised about items that have disappeared or appeared, or issues on how to interpret the model [McGrath]. This model has caused some confusion within the team, and slowed progress. Guethart asked about the containership and document assembly, which could provide insight into the actual associations. The normalized component notes that elements may have future undetermined uses (future document assemblies).
  • Do we concentrate on usable schemas for today's needs vs. future document assemblies (longer timeline to complete) [Probert]? For the actual building of the aggregates, the content has changed [Seaburg on Adcock's concern]. Unexpected work has been created as a result of the reorganization of the normalized component model [Seaburg]. Team needs to invest more effort in resolving these issues to clearly move forward; confusion still exists on this model. The normalized model infers some potential assemblies [McGrath].
  • Need to ensure that the Scope Document is consistent with the normalized component model. McGrath will respond to Adcock's issue (see end of these minutes).
  • Can we complete a review cycle on Scope Document and model outside of the remainder of the release [Probert]? This should be investigated.

5. QA Team report

• Scope Statement - see notes above about scheduling.

6. Reports on status of other UBL subcommittees

• Tools and technique sc
  • Schema generator: Stuhec asked for comments on documentation for configuration file and/or schema generator. Tim McGrath will send comments to Stuhec.
• Naming and design rules sc - no report.

7. Reports on status of other related projects - Deferred until next week, not enough time.

• Core Component Technical Specs (Mike)
• Core Component Supplemental Documents (Sally)
• Ontology sub-group (Peter)
• X12 Reference Model for XML Design - X12 Naming and Design Rules: See http://www.x12.org/x12org/xmldesign/index.cfm.

8. Other Business - Other agenda items: Defer.

Next Meeting - 12 November 2002, same phone number and time.

Appendix - Mike's Issues Email

I feel that it would be useful for people to have a view of this, and look at it, prior to any teleconference today. There are one or two observations that I am coming to that worry me:-

1. The new spreadsheet still seems more oriented towards Order than it should be, as a library of re-usable components for all trade cycle documents.
2. The alphabetic sequencing is nice BUT it makes before-&-after comparison very difficult. It might have been better to await a better tool than a spreadsheet. Then it occurred to me that if the UBL UIDs are generated from the alpha sequenced list, they will immediately get out of neat sequence through later additions throughout the alphabetic range, and so what was the point?
3. We seem to be applying a specialising rule in someplaces and a generalising rule elsewhere, which suggests the need to identify what the criteria are for doing things differently! At the moment I feel we are on rapidly shifting sands. Examples are:-
   1. specialisation principle gives Transport Equipment and Item Measurements
   2. generalisation of 'ItemIdentifier' from 'Buyer-', 'Seller-', 'Manufacturer-' and 'Standard-' '-ItemIdentifier' which differentiated UBL's scenario from EAN's
   3. generalisation which has lost 'ReceivingContact', 'ShippingContact' and 'OrderContact'
4. If one follows the specialisation principle slavishly as is done with Equipment and Item Measurements, then what is to stop one also having specialised Parties such as BuyerParty, SellerParty etc?
5. The parent-child relationship problem. In the spreadsheet we are now showing 'where used' and not 'what is used' as we were before. I think it is less useful in its present form. Also I believe the change is inconsistently applied; examples are:-
   1. 'OwnerParty' is a green line item within 'TransportEquipment', and was 'OwnershipID' within 'TransportEquipment' in Op66v2WIP, i.e. the relationship way-around is unchanged
   2. 'Shipment' is a green line item within 'TransportEquipment', yet 'TransportEquipment' was an aggregate within 'Shipment' in Op66v2WIP, i.e. the relationship way-around is changed.
6. This confuses the hell out of me! I am concerned by changes I can see in the Item and Line Item area, but I have not had time to explore these yet.

I'm sending this out in advance to give people a chance to look at it before the teleconference, as I believe a number of serious issues arise as well as detail.